updated 04:45 pm EDT, Wed March 31, 2010

RIM's Q4 09 slightly higher than previous best

BlackBerry creator RIM today claimed another record quarter of smartphone sales in the winter. It shipped a total 10.5 million BlackBerries, slightly more than its already record 10.2 million in the summer and a new all-time high. Of those, 4.9 million were new to the BlackBerry and marked another best-ever result.

The Canadian phone designer also touted financial results to back up the sales. Net profit has jumped 37 percent year-over-year to $710.1 million. Pure revenue grew less aggressively, up 18 percent to $4.08 billion, but was credited to actual phone sales by a wide margin. Exactly 80 percent of the revenue could be attributed to BlackBerries alone, while just 16 percent belonged to the actual push e-mail services.

No immediate credit was given for the increases, but phones like the Bold 9700, Curve 8500 and Storm2 had just recently launched during the quarter.

The sales have kept RIM ahead of Apple but didn't grow quickly enough to avoid a narrowing gap between BlackBerry and iPhone sales. Compared to a year ago, Apple shipped twice as many iPhones at 8.7 million; quarter-to-quarter results favored Apple more as it jumped from 7.4 million, a much larger gain than for RIM.

Results won't directly compare as the quarterly timeframes aren't identical. Apple is expected to provide its own details for its winter quarter in late April.

2 for 1 deals clouding this

How many handsets were normal price, vs discounted, or thrown in to sweeten a deal?
It seems that you can't just use handset metric, without also looking at either compatible handset userbase, profit margins, profit per handset etc.

It's working

Keep in mind

Who hates Apple the most? Except Testudo that is. IT Departments. They've been banning iPhones from access just as they did the Mac. So these sales numbers are from a few people making decisions for many. Many who either don't care or are "So what."

That's right

Anyone who buys a blackberry are either idiots or Apple haters. There can't be one person out there with intelligence who actually likes the blackberry. It's that they're idiots or fools or apple-haters.

iPod touch should be included for a real compariso

The 10.5 million Blackberry is not just their smartphones, that's their tiny feature phones as well. The Apple number is just smartphones. If you include iPod touch, the Apple number doubles to about 18 million. That is a more accurate picture of what is going on because they you're comparing the full-size and "lite" models from both manufacturers.